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Tesla Motors To Suspend Roadster Production
Wyatt Earp writes with news that a recent SEC filing from Tesla Motors revealed the company plans to stop production on its electric Roadster (and the Roadster Sport as well) in 2011. This will leave the automaker without any cars to sell until the launch of its Model S sedan (financed in part by $465 million in DoE loans) in 2012. Tesla plans to resume production of Roadster models "at least a year" after the Model S arrives. From Wired's Autopia blog:
"'As a result, we anticipate that we may generate limited, if any, revenue from selling electric vehicles after 2011 until the launch of the planned model S,' the company says in the SEC filing. That may not be a problem if S production starts on plan and goes off without a hitch, but if Tesla hits any snags, things could get ugly fast — a point it concedes in the filing. 'The launch of the Model S could be delayed for a number of reasons and any such delays may be significant and would extend the period in which we would generate limited, if any, revenues from sales of our electric vehicles.'"
Let's hope they don't screw the pooch... We need companies like Tesla to prove electric cars can be viable alternatives to prevalent gasoline vehicles...
When Subaru came out with their 2010 Legacy model they brought out the big guns and re-engineered the body design completely. Subaru redesigns the Legacy on a five year timeline and instead of building on the tried and true Legacy platform, they designed the new Legacy around the WRX STi platform. The result is a car with a great engine, large interior, and aggressive styling.
The other result is terrible sales.
No one likes the new exterior. It resembles Honda's generic styling more than Subaru's conspicuously different styling. No one buys a Legacy because they want to drive an Accord.
You can't build a city by burning it to the ground. You need at the very least a Granary and a Marketplace so that you can grow your population while making income. This allows you to finance all the other fun stuff you want to do like developing war trolls or building sorcerer's guilds. Without the basic income stream, you're just going to get screwed when some bear rushes in and eats all your citizens because you don't have even a single halberdier around to guard the town.
This is a bad idea that will put Tesla out of business soon. I feel almost bad for all the people who prepaid.
The Tesla model S sedan will retail for $50,000+ which means that less than 20% (and that is being very generous) of Americans will be able to afford this car. Tesla is a niche and it will always be niche. The best that they (and the taxpayers) could hope for is for them to be bought by one of the major auto manufacturers. Why should the taxpayers be financing car production by boutique manufacturers for wealthy people? If the government subsidizes heavily so that average people can buy this particular car then you have to explain why the government should be in the business of picking winners and losers in the market for private automobiles. If Tesla is such a good investment then why cant they raise $450 million from the private equity market instead of from taxpayers; 99% of whom will never sit behind the wheel of a Tesla?
Or they need to retool their existing plants so they can start producing the model S.
Taxpayer bears the risk of default, Tesla execs get to keep any windfalls of development, all the while drawing their salary against the loan. Doesn't sound like the best deal for the taxpayer to me.
This needs a car anaolgy!
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
You have to give 'em credit for courage. Moving away from the incremental change model transforms the consumer's unacknowledged secondary role of beta tester into that of alpha tester, so they either get it right the first time or they likely become a blip in automotive history.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Its a brilliant business model: Sell $2 million worth of roadsters to generate publicity and get the hang of building electric, get a 400+ million dollar low interest loan, throw the dice on getting a product out and if you win you're rich. If you lose declare bankruptcy and retire on the salaries you paid yourself from the loan.
If they tried to actually build cars they might get another $2 million in revenue which might get them one million in cash flow but it doesn't even compare to the $400 million they can play with courtesy of the government and it distracts the company from paying attention to the $400 mill project.
These guys are brilliant hypesters with good government management skills.
Or Lotus pulled the platform
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that the Model S will fail not because Tesla Motors is staffed by idiots (it isn't), and not because the gubmint won't support electric vehicles, but because fully electric vehicles cannot be competitive with liquid-fuel vehicles.
Forget unit prices, horsepower, yadda yadda, here's the only statistic that matters:
Energy density of lithium batteries: 1 megajoule/kg
Energy density of gasoline: 45 megajoules/kg
Vehicles are unique among energy technologies in that they typically have to carry their energy source around with them. So energy stored per mass is the most important figure of merit for vehicle propulsion, and electric vehicles are inherently 45 times worse than their liquid-fuel competition.
To compensate for that factor of 45, serious sacrifices have to be made: either you accept a huge reduction in vehicle range, a huge reduction in vehicle performance, or you spend ridiculous amounts of money reducing drag and friction -- spending that shows up in the final price of the vehicle.
I predict that electric vehicles will never be able to overcome the energy density barrier and become popular, until either liquid fuel is no longer a readily available competitor, or vehicles no longer have to carry their own energy supply (think electric trains.)
And if you think you'll be able to convince the public to stop using gasoline "for the good of the planet", or for any reason other than prohibitive cost, I think you're probably naive. I've been trying to think of times when humans gave up an energy source for any reason other than cost vs performance. The only example I can think of is human slavery, and we had to destroy half of a nation to convince them to give it up.
until 2012 to see the S car go.
Correct.
Caveat Utilitor
"and practical sense to have an electric car for daily use, and rent a fuel car for longer trips"
And that doesn't really make sense for a huge part of the country where we go to the store once a week for food, and fill up a van. We have to haul stuff to our property to maintain buildings, fields, etc.
I said "city boy" and I'm joking a bit. But I'm doing that show you that the way you live and where you live is up to you and is neither right nor wrong. Please give everyone else the same benefit of freedom to choose where and how they want to live
Well, it seems like you would figure that out on a case by case basis, by doing a fairly simple cost comparison after observing or estimating your typical usage patterns. If it turns out that it costs you more to rent a truck when you need it than to own a truck, then buy the truck. Otherwise, rent the truck. Is that so hard?
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
The Tesla S has been designed with the capability of swapping the battery pack in 5 minutes, as well as a 45 minute quick charge at a suitable charging facility (fits pretty well with the idea of having lunch or shopping while the battery is charged).
1) Modern automotive-style li-ion battery lifespans are similar to transmission lifespans or other vehicle component lifespans. Fuel cells, on the other hand, have about half the lifespan of said batteries.
2) It's not that li-ion batteries are difficult to recycle; it's that the automotive-style li-ions are nontoxic and the raw materials in them are cheap, so there's not much incentive to recycle them.
3) Hydrogen generally costs $3-$15/kg, with the lower end from natural gas and the upper end from electrolysis.
4) Hydrogen is *not* the solution if you want power; fuel cells are priced per watt, not per watt hour.
5) The hydrogen cycle in a fuel cell vehicle with electricity as a source is 1/4 to 1/2 as efficient as that in a BEV. So no matter what your power source, you'll be requiring 2-4 times as much of it. Even if natural gas is the source, EVs are still usually 20-50% more efficient.
6) If you want to talk about resources, unlike EVs, fuel cells *do* use rare elements (in particular platinum).
7) FCVs cost about an order of magnitude more than EVs. For example, there's only one FCV available today that's not subsidized, and that's Toyota's FCHV-adv. It's by all standards a seemingly normal SUV, in terms of power, range, etc. But it costs over $8k a month to lease. One year of leasing of it would nearly pay for a Tesla Roadster outright -- a carbon fiber supercar that does 0-60 in under 4 seconds.
8) FCVs *require* infrastructure to do anything. EVs only require new infrastructure for away-from-home recharging, and a heck of a lot less of it.
I can keep going if you'd like. There's a reason why our Secretary of Energy tried to kill off our fuel cell programs. Tried. Congress forced him to keep them going, mainly due to amendments from people in districts who had been receiving the fuel cell research money.
Noone ever goes walrus!
Interesting speculation, but after reading about Tesla's founder Elon Musk I think you're wrong. He made a fortune on PayPal and could easily have called it quits and retired rich. Instead he doubles down again and again, pouring his own money into Space-X and Tesla. He's an engineer and he what he has accomplished so far, and looks poised to accomplish, is quite amazing.
The range problem has been long solved for electric cars, until such a time as a cheaper and better battery system is developed. It's a non issue, a red herring against electric cars. And it doesn't require exotic battery swap out stations and all that nonsense, which *don't* exist and would cost hundreds of billions in unnecessary infrastructure cost to create, money we just don't have right now for that, when we already have enough regular gas stations.
Now, look at this short video, see the thing on the back of that pure electric car? That's a rigidly attached range extender generator trailer. Not only does it give you unlimited range, just stop and fill up with gas as you would normally, but being a two point hitch instead of one, it doesn't flex, and even trailer noobs can use it, and back up easy, etc.
You can have your shorter range electric commuter car, and still be able to do just as long of trips on the highway as any other pure fuel burning car.
That can be taken any way you want it to go (I'd prefer a larger trailer that also had some cargo space to it), but that's the gist of it. A range extender turns your pure electric commuter into a "modular hybrid"** on demand, for those odd times you need a lot more range. You could buy one, use it also at your house for when the grid goes down in storms, etc, as is common now in suburbia or the country to have, the home backup genny, or just rent one for those longer trips.
**modular hybrids like this setup in the video make more sense to me than the "everything on board all the time" models like you have with the dual gasoline engine plus electric motor, plus batteries, plus fuel tank rube goldberg traditional hybrids like the prius or the upcoming volt. And heck, as to a generator trailer, you could DIY in one day with all off the shelf stuff from home depot, today, right now. Small trailer, appropriate sized generator, some u-bolt clamps, etc, and then build your charging plug and cable.
We just need the affordable electric cars out there on the dealers lots, and small trucks. And we could have them, if they just picked one steenking closed factory and retooled and just built the damn things, like a Model A electric car, just do it, in mass quantities rather than fooling around with more studies and only coming up with exotic sportscar high performance expensive electric cars, and with wasting time on those dual everything hybrids, which are the worst of both worlds, hauling around all the dual weight and taking up space when you don't have to most of the time.
30-40 mile range is plenty for like the bulk of commuting in the US, not all, but the bulk of it, potentially tens of millions of customers right there, with the affordable, non real exotic, battery tech we already have.
I had to look for them myself, I hadn't noticed them previously. They're at the bottom of the summary, before the comments, same line as the story tags. I guess those icons have entered the range of 'ignore by default' by web readers. Also kudos to slashdot to have them available but so unobtrusive.
I take exception to that. I'm a moronic douche bag.
Never mistaken for cool!
It still has a gas engine, a fuel tank, an electric motor, and batteries, all crammed in the same package, this time with more weight than current hybrids. It's a traditional hybrid, albeit with more battery storage so it has some useful range on batteries alone, so they call it a "plug in", but that has been an aftermarket mod option guys have done to their priuses already. The potential was always there, just the cost shoots up fast (also the priusus have wimpy electrics, they need to go to a larger motor there). Anyway, did you really look at that genny trailer thing? It's tiny, you wouldn't even notice it for trips when you really needed that extra range, it isn't like it would be some huge chore to tow it, and the two point hitch is a spiffy idea.
One of the promises of pure electric, once made in mass quantities and not in limited production runs of exotic high performance sportscars, or "sports sedans", is a cheaper vehicle, plus more dependable and less maintenance. With the modular hybrid approach, if you just need to rent the generator trailer a few times a year at most, you eliminate all that maintenance, cost, etc, and stuff to break down, at least for yourself, the shop maintains those with pro mechanics. Just depends how much you really need to go beyond 40 miles (which I think is supposed to be the volt's range on batts). The volt is going to come in high, in the high end sedan class price wise, like 40-50 grand I bet once it stops being "coming soon" and they really sell the things. Glad some folks will be able to afford it, but I couldn't now. Or, they will sell it at a loss and hide the fact, just to sell them and justify their big loan to keep from going really bankrupt.
I used to work for those guys..I am not a huge fan of GM. I have one of their old vans, it was swell, but have seen too many other really not so hot rides come from there, and they all are overpriced (IMO, that's subjective..I don't like the management there, and being in the UAW..echhh).
Different strokes. I think there's a decent market for pure electrics, especially if they can hit around 20 grand, with grade B batteries and not top of the line. I know eventually I would like one, a small truck, as long as it has about a 40 mile range, that would suit my needs OK, that's the round trip to town for me, without completely depleting the batteries (it is really a bit over 30 miles in actual distance, so a 40 mile range is a nice cushion all around). That would help make the batts last longer. Or quite a bit of cruising around the farm here, I can get by there just a couple miles a day (800 acre farm). Most of the time, I would never need to burn any fuel at all then, could go all year and never burn any fuel, just charge it, and I have some solar panels already, and would get some more if I needed them. That would be full transportation independence, and no worries about either the grid being up, or price/availability of fuel *at all*, which to me is the ultimate goal, I dig on independence in things. right now, we are very close on food, real close.
Already went through that opec embargo and so on, actually lost my job at the time because I simply could not get to work at all, huge lines at the stations, two gallons max, ten bucks a gallon. It went from normal to that almost overnight. And if anything, the US imports a lot more than it did back then, (30% then, 60% now, around there) so any global oil availability "issues" would be worse than back then..say all those dummies decide to light up Iran, then Iran lights up all sorts of other interesting places, then the straits of hormuz go down, and etc. and this is not a wild improbability either. Oil is a global fungible, so the market would..take yer pick, I could see it hitting 3-400 a barrel within days. Because they could get it. When they got ya by the short and curlys, you squeal.
For a ride, I make do now with a small four cylinder diesel truck, gets around 40 MPG highway, 35 or so on secondary roads or going in a lower gear, etc.